I bought an iPad to make this video, so I hope you like it.

Welcome to the future, folks!

I got my first taste of the future in 1998, when I bought a secondhand Newton MessagePad 110 (introduced in 1995), after the Newton product line was discontinued. As I used it to take notes at university, jot down apronyms while on-the-go, read eBooks on a long bus trip, I had a feeling that the future would taste a lot like this. In 2002 I upgraded to a MessagePad 130 (introduced in 1997.) That’s the 130 that you can see being put into the iPad box at the end of the video. In 2003, I got a Newton eMate (introduced in 1997) and enrolled in a postgraduate mathematics course just for fun. My classmates were amazed at this fancy ‘new’ gadget, as I wrote mathematics with the stylus and typed explanations with the keyboard. There’s more about my Newtons on this old page.

I never had a MessagePad 2000, though my brother-in-law had one on loan from a colleague. It was faster than my Mac at the time, and could even run a webserver.

Now Apple is making handheld and tablet computers again, and I’ve gone back to the future. The difference is, when I use an Apple handheld now, everybody knows what it is. They’re not futuristic any more, because this is the future.

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